Mejoras en la calidad de vida de los pacientes con Miastenia Gravis sin timoma intervenidos con timectomía videotoracoscópica

Abstract

Thymectomy as part of Myasthenia Gravis treatment has proved to produce total or partial clinical remissions. But almost always, parameters to measure this outcome were quantitative, as amount of medication, presence or absence of symptoms. Very important factors of the psychosocial field as real determinants of quality of life after surgery in this kind of patients have been less investigated. Thereto, we performed a retrospective qualitative study to know the quality of life improvement after thymectomy in non-thymomatous Myasthenia Gravis patients. Seventeen patients in the period January 2003 to December 2013 met the inclusion criteria: extended thymectomy, Myasthenia Gravis confirmed, non-thymomatous, over 18 years-old. We applied the SF-36 questionnaire and the collected data were tabulated and analysed with SPSS 22.0. The Wilcoxon test for non-parametric data was used to investigate any change in the quality of life after surgery. Quantitative surgical outcome of these patients was: 52.9% had significant clinical improvement according to the Oosterhuis scale (total remission = 5, mild symptoms = 3, mild disability = 1), of which 17.6% had complete stable remission without medication and 35.2% had pharmacological remission with low doses. All dimensions of the SF-36 questionnaire improved their median value after thymectomy, with p<0.05. It seems that there is an improvement of quality of life in patients suffering Myasthenia Gravis after extended thymectomy.